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The History of Taking Children Seriously

This is a history of Taking Children Seriously (TCS), particularly the online community leaders: Sarah Fitz-Claridge (SFC), David Deutsch (DD) and Elliot Temple (ET).

TCS was founded in 1992 by SFC and DD. (SFC was Sarah Lawrence at the time but changed her name in 2003.) It started with a paper journal. When ET joined in 2001, the community had TCS list (an email discussion group with around 1,000 members), a website with articles, and a chatroom.

SFC, a mother of two, did most of the recruiting. She met with homeschoolers and libertarians, networked and gave speeches internationally, and posted at many online parenting and homeschooling groups. TCS advocates frequently got banned from other online groups but did get the word out first.

DD, a theoretical physicist, did most of the intellectual theorizing. He had made significant contributions related to quantum computation and learned about Karl Popper’s Critical Rationalism (CR) philosophy. He and SFC were libertarians with ideas like individual freedom, minimal or no government, and laissez-faire capitalism.

DD’s books are The Fabric of Reality (FoR, 1997) and The Beginning of Infinity (BoI, 2011). They discuss science and CR philosophy. DD also wrote hundreds of blog posts about politics between 2003 and 2008.

A main idea of TCS is that CR – a philosophy about how to create knowledge – applies to parenting and education. DD thought we must understand how learning works in order to know how to treat children. There are no reasonable philosophical positions which imply that punishments are educational. And if punishments aren’t educational, then they’re cruel and abusive, and “coercive” as TCS calls it.

TCS was also based on (classical) liberal values like peace, freedom, cooperation, individual rights and opposing tyrannical authority (be it a king, parent or teacher). Karl Popper shared these values, although he was no libertarian.

CR says all people learn by brainstorming, critical thinking and critical discussion. TCS concluded that even young children, even babies, think and learn this way. People learn on their own initiative with help from others, not as buckets which educators can pour knowledge into like water. Learners are the leaders of their own learning.

TCS’s big claim was that children could be raised well without doing anything to them that they disliked. It’s always possible to find “common preferences” – win/win solutions that everyone prefers. The main obstacle to this kind of rational problem solving is the irrationalities that adults have. Irrationalities aren’t inborn, they come from coercion, so don’t coerce your child and he won’t become irrational.

TCS Activities Timeline

SFC wrote around 1,000 TCS list posts (emails), mostly from 1994-2002. DD wrote around 2,000, mostly from 1996-2002. ET wrote around 3,700, mostly from 2002-2012, though he hasn’t stopped writing about TCS and still answers questions and posts.

SFC secretly began building a separate community unrelated to TCS which she launched in 2003. This partially explains why she reduced her involvement with TCS. Year after year, SFC hid these other activities, while leading people to expect more TCS activity soon and misleading people about her interests and priorities. She avoided transitioning to a new community leader, and blocked messages sharing alternative TCS resources, which left many TCS-attempting parents with little support and fewer resources than they reasonably expected.

SFC stopped creating the TCS Journal in 2000 after 32 issues. She never announced that it ended and left the webpage up where people could pay money to sign up. People were still confused about the matter years later and SFC still didn’t clarify, while still advertising herself as the TCS journal editor.

In late 2002, SFC deleted the TCS IRC chatroom that she’d started in 2000. She said she didn’t know how to run it well and received too many complaints. Rather than solve the problem, she shut it down.

In 2003, SFC discontinued the TCS website. She let the domain name expire without putting a notice on the site telling people about the new site, redirecting traffic, or leaving it up as an archive. She created a new site which had a worse layout and she never even finished transferring over all the old articles. The new site was never very active and SFC mostly stopped work on it after only 3 months. There was an occasional update later, e.g. there were 4 posts in 2004. After trying to be active for one month in 2005, the updates stopped entirely in 2006.

In 2006, SFC announced moving the TCS list from AOL to the new website. People were supposed to be automatically transferred but the new group had no posts and people kept using AOL. This was never explained. Then in 2008, SFC moved TCS list to Yahoo Groups and intentionally didn’t automatically transfer anyone. The result was reducing membership down to around 50 people from a past high over 1,000.

After these disasters, ET created the TCS Google Group in 2009 and Fallible Ideas website in 2010 which included articles about CR and TCS. ET’s TCS list had around double the membership of SFC’s and many more discussions. It became the primary TCS list while SFC’s group went inactive. Meanwhile, at DD’s request, ET also made the BoI Google Group and BoI website in 2011.

ET also became the owner of the Autonomy Respecting Relationships (ARR) forum in 2010 or 2011 after running the group as moderator for over a year. ARR was started by SFC and DD as a way to apply TCS ideas to romantic relationships. Major ARR ideas included that standard romantic relationship patterns are irrational and hurt people, and that freedom implies polyamory instead of monogamy. ET, however, criticized polyamory as well as monogamy.

Elliot Temple Joins TCS

ET read DD’s book, FoR, in 2001, then read DD’s TCS articles and joined the email group and chatroom. DD regularly talked with TCS community members on IRC and on the email group. ET quickly got much of DD’s attention due to energetic curiosity and quickly learning and arguing in favor of CR and TCS ideas. Over the next decade, ET and DD had around 5,000 hours of discussions (the majority were one-on-one, not on the public groups). In 2002, ET started a private email discussion group named curi where DD frequently participated. In 2003, ET started his blog, Curiosity.

After only a few months, ET became TCS’s most active advocate. He was more interested, and wrote more, than anyone else. He’d debate anyone about anything (like DD, ET was interested in ideas broadly, not just parenting), and whenever he had trouble winning an argument, he brought the issue to DD for advice. That way, ET learned how DD would argue each issue and address each challenge. DD heavily influenced ET’s views and arguments. For example, DD converted ET from left to right wing, persuaded him of capitalist and libertarian ideas, and got ET reading Ayn Rand. DD also persuaded ET to favor George W. Bush and the Iraq War politically, to support Israel, and to reject environmentalist ideas like recycling and global warming.

Due to the close association and agreement on so many issues, people, including one of DD’s close friends, accused ET of being DD’s puppet. However, the agreement was achieved by rational discussion, not puppetry. ET argued with DD more than anyone else and persistently followed up on disagreements. It took ET around five years of learning to become skilled enough to win any significant arguments with DD, at which point some disagreements started forming as ET developed more of his own ideas.

ET began providing detailed feedback and editing for BoI in 2004, which continued until publication in 2011. DD and ET routinely discussed topics related to the book. In total, ET wrote around 250 pages specifically to help with BoI, which is enough material to fill a book. That’s why the acknowledgments say “especially Elliot Temple”.

ET was also recognized favorably by SFC. For example, in 2006, ET, SFC and another speaker gave a TCS seminar to a paying audience in SFC’s home. In 2003, SFC tried to persuade ET to “becom[e] a regular contributor to the TCS blog/web site”. She said more articles from ET would help with her goal to “make it more difficult for people to bitch about TCS the way they are now.” SFC had some mixed feelings, stating “In the past, I have sometimes found your posts a bit too harsh and dismissive and lacking explanation, but I have noticed you have written some beautiful posts which are both true and also kind and non-alienating.” Overall, SFC saw ET positively and wanted him to be more involved with TCS including writing official articles because, also, “I really love your writing.” Similarly, in 2005, SFC was also asking ET for more TCS writing: “If you would like to write articles for the site, and if you would like to contribute to a new FAQ for it, that would be splendid!”

TCS Affects Lives

Thousands of people took an interest in TCS. As with many communities, especially controversial ones, the majority quit for one reason or another. Some had major disagreements with TCS from the start. Others liked TCS initially but had major disagreements when they learned more. And others liked TCS but drifted away without planning to – they just never really got around to doing much. But hundreds of people made TCS a major part of their life. TCS affected how many children were treated.

SFC led people to believe that TCS was an important, growing movement that they could join and then get ongoing help and advice. People thought TCS came with resources and support, at least articles, a chatroom and the email group. But then SFC and DD stopped writing articles, SFC discontinued the chatroom and journal, and SFC reduced her TCS list to complete silence. This harmed people who were struggling to live by TCS ideas, as well as preventing other people from joining TCS.

These problems were made much worse by the lack of announcements, clarity, transition plan, etc. The original TCS founders didn’t take responsibility for the movement, what they led people to expect from them, and the consequences of their actions for people’s lives. Instead they broadly kept up public appearances years after ceasing most TCS activity.

The continued availability of TCS materials, and discussion places where people can ask questions, is due pretty much entirely to ET. But ET has done more to take over DD’s intellectual role than SFC’s community leader role, so it’s not a full replacement. And SFC sabotaged the transition to ET’s leadership by preventing many people from finding out that the new resources existed. Even some of the more involved TCS parents were left not knowing what happened or how to continue with TCS.

SFC knowingly poured time and effort into a different, unrelated, non-TCS community, in secret, while misleading the TCS parents that had trusted her. These actions go beyond explanations like merely neglect, failure or incompetence.

DD Quits

DD gradually left TCS for several reasons. First, after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, many TCS members sided with the terrorists by making anti-American comments. The political conflict divided the TCS community. Most parents open to TCS were left wing, while DD and his intellectual associates were right wing.

By the end of 2002, DD didn’t write public posts as frequently, although he actively discussed with ET and others. From there, DD’s public posting gradually declined, but it took a decade to stop. Meanwhile, DD often watched ET debate in favor of DD’s ideas, like TCS, and encouraged and advised ET behind the scenes.

As time went on, DD pushed back the publication deadline for BoI but eventually had to face it. In the several years leading up to the 2011 publication, he became increasingly busy and talked with everyone less. He even had to cut a few planned chapters from the book in order to finish.

Although DD hoped and planned for things to return to normal after the book was done, they never did. Instead, he quit every discussion forum, stopped talking about TCS, and decided to focus more on his new physics idea, Constructor Theory.

After gradually distancing himself, DD stopped collaborating with ET and most other active community members around the end of 2011. DD never gave a clear explanation of why, never wrote an article arguing his case, never announced anything had changed, and never even tried to claim that ET had changed in any significant way. It was DD, not ET, who had changed. DD was disillusioned by how little TCS had changed the world, and how few people had learned his ideas. DD wanted to try to get along with the mainstream more, while ET continued developing non-mainstream ideas like TCS and CR.

Looking Back At TCS

From day one, TCS had always offended many people and attracted hateful comments for its unconventional ideas. DD hoped it would spread and gain traction over time, and it did some, but less than DD wanted. Meanwhile SFC ended the journal, chatroom and original website, reduced TCS List membership by 95%, and stopped creating content or recruiting.

ET kept TCS alive as a philosophical theory with some resources to help, but the number of participating parents dropped over time. Eventually, there was little discussion about parents trying to use TCS in their life.

To see quotes from the harsh, offensive side of early TCS, as led by SFC and DD, see this post and the comments under it.

The TCS list grew initially. But SFC said that whenever the list got over 1,000 members, a bunch of people would unsubscribe when there was an active topic causing them to receive lots of emails. Many of the people SFC recruited were not interested enough in TCS to direct the emails to a folder outside their inbox, and just left instead.

The TCS list was moderated. SFC and her buddies blocked whatever posts they wanted, quite frequently and aggressively. It was common for posters to regularly have some their posts blocked and keep participating anyway, though some people left when they weren’t allowed to speak freely. Consequently, SFC had control over the content of the list. If the content alienated people, that was her choice.

At his groups, ET always emphasized free speech instead of controlling what you were allowed to say. He thought this better fit the total-freedom-and-libertarianism-and-maybe-even-anarcho-capitalism type principles of TCS and its founders.

Conflict Between DD and ET

When he quit TCS, DD also quit associating with TCS’s new leader, ET, as well as with active participants in the TCS community. ET wanted to do problem solving. What about CR, common preferences, and win/win solutions? ET wanted to fix things but DD refused.

At the end of 2012, over a year after DD had become unfriendly and withdrawn the help and support he’d led ET to expect going forward, DD had refused many olive branches from ET. ET wrote I Changed My Mind About David Deutsch. This carefully worded piece left out most details to respect DD’s privacy because DD didn’t want the problems discussed and debated openly. Every statement was written so that it could easily be defended and explained if private facts were included in the discussion. DD saw the article prior to publication and made no objection then or later. Others in the community supported the article or didn’t mind; there was no opposition to it because people had seen DD change and leave over the years. ET thought the article was necessary because he’d been such a fan and promoter of DD, so he thought he should update people when he changed his mind about stuff he’d told them. ET was taking responsibility for the advice he’d given other people, as he believed SFC and DD should have but did not.

Although preferring to mostly leave DD alone, ET also wrote David Deutsch Interview Undermines His Philosophy in 2017, Accepting vs. Preferring Theories – Reply to David Deutsch in 2018, and David Deutsch Smears Ayn Rand in 2019. ET thought it was important to defend the ideas he’d learned from DD, even against DD himself. Again DD had no objections, publicly or privately. DD didn’t want to defend or explain his opinions or offer any rebuttal. Although critical discussion and rational truth seeking are major parts of the CR and TCS philosophies, DD didn’t do them nor explain why he wasn’t doing them and how that was compatible with his philosophy. ET’s claims remain uncontested. Meanwhile, DD never said anything negative about ET, leaving him to continue running the BoI, TCS and ARR groups and explain philosophies like TCS and CR to the world.

SFC Destroys FoR Group

Alan Forrester (AF) ran the FoR discussion group, about DD’s book, for a decade. He has a CR blog. Although AF ran the FoR group alone, SFC was the original group creator and never gave AF ownership. This allowed SFC to do whatever she wanted with the group, regardless of AF’s opinions or consent.

After 10 years with no posts or involvement by SFC, she suddenly took over FoR in order to ban ET as revenge for the I Changed My Mind About David Deutsch post. (AF agreed with ET regarding the philosophical issues that ET and DD disagreed about, and didn’t want ET banned.) Then SFC immediately neglected the group and soon everyone stopped using it. She’d been uninvolved because she wasn’t interested in FoR ideas and because she was still involved with her secret, unrelated community; being motivated to ban someone didn’t change that situation.

Just like when SFC neglected the TCS Yahoo Group, everyone interested in discussion moved over to one of ET’s groups. In that case, they went to ET’s TCS group. In this case, they went to the BoI group: since DD’s second book was out now, fans of the first book naturally were interested in the second book too, which covered similar topics.

SFC didn’t attempt problem solving, consent or common preference finding with ET, AF or the FoR group membership. She violated the standard group policy of giving warnings before banning people. And she said nothing indicating that DD himself had any problem with ET’s article. It seemed to be her own personal vendetta, and she didn’t care that she was primarily punishing AF and the FoR discussion group members, not ET who owned the BoI group anyway.

DD and ET had always had a relationship based heavily on explicit communication: if you want something, request it; if you prefer something, say so. DD knew he could make requests of ET and had wide latitude to get whatever he wanted. Several times, DD had asked ET to refrain from saying something or take something down. But this time, DD made no request and expressed no preference, knowing that ET would take that as a go ahead signal. DD, to this day, hasn’t said anything negative about ET or ET’s critical articles.

Fallible Ideas Group

In 2013, ET merged several discussion groups into one, the Fallible Ideas (FI) discussion group. Although the older groups were left unchanged, ET simply asked people to switch and every active poster voluntarily started posting on FI. This smooth transition stands out in contrast with SFC’s disastrous move of the TCS group.

ET merged the groups because the topics are all related. They’re all about understanding good philosophy and applying it. And, over time, under his leadership, the groups had become more philosophically sophisticated. For example, it had become unusual for posters to be unfamiliar with DD’s books. With a smaller membership that was more knowledgeable about all the ideas, and had more consistent ideas, having a single forum made sense.

Thus, the FI group is the continuation of the TCS group from 1994, as well as the ARR, FoR, BoI groups. The FI group also merged some more minor groups: TCS Society (a companion to the TCS group for political discussion), Rational Politics (a newer group by Justin Mallone, which ET and DD participated at), and an Ayn Rand discussion group (by ET).

Where Are They Now?

DD has gone on to work on Constructor Theory. He also became a member of the Royal Society in 2008. DD and SFC seem to no longer like to talk about TCS or be associated with it, but don’t make clear statements or requests about the matter. ET has withheld the older TCS archives posts from the public at DD’s request, even though DD has not provided any public statement about his reasons.

SFC stopped being involved with philosophy, TCS or ARR. She still hasn’t explained what happened or apologized to any parents.

SFC’s two children were friends with DD too, and one was also a friend of ET. They are adults today but never got very involved with TCS or CR. No other child with any sort of TCS upbringing became very involved either.

ET has gone on to improve CR with new ideas like Yes or No Philosophy, Paths Forward, Overreaching, Impasse Chains, Using Intellectual Processes to Combat Bias and Rationally Resolving Conflicts of Ideas. As of today (2020), ET still posts regularly to the FI discussion group and has been a consistent, active poster continuously for 18 years, and he’s branched out to videos and podcasts.

Editor’s note: I made a serious effort to get the facts and dates right. If anyone believes any fact is in error, please let me know.

More info:

If you liked this, or want to learn more about TCS, sign up for the Fallible Ideas newsletter and join the Fallible Ideas discussion group.


Elliot Temple on February 5, 2020

Messages (18)

Why do you talk about yourself in the third person?


Anonymous at 5:11 PM on February 5, 2020 | #15392 | reply | quote

#15392 is a low-quality comment that indicates that its author hasn't read any of the 10 previous posts on this blog.


Alisa at 6:32 PM on February 5, 2020 | #15393 | reply | quote

#15393 I searched "third" on the front page and didn't find an answer to the question. What do you mean?

I used third person because it's broadly impersonal and fact-oriented, not a personal account.


curi at 7:50 PM on February 5, 2020 | #15394 | reply | quote

#15394 "Why do you talk ..." uses the *present indefinite tense*, which, according to learngrammar.net,

> denotes a stative or habitual or eternally true action.

Thus, as written, the question implies that your use of the third person to refer to yourself is *typical*, rather than a choice you made for this specific essay.

If the author intended to inquire only about this particular essay, they could have phrased the question differently, e.g.:

- Why are you talking about yourself in the third person?

- Why did you talk about yourself in the third person?

- Why are you talking about yourself in the third person?

I brought up the previous 10 posts because you referred to yourself in the first person in each of them, contrary to the question's implication.

Also, the question used the verb "talk" where "write" would have been more accurate. This lack of accuracy is relevant because the scope of the question wasn't limited to this particular essay, and the situations that call for referring to oneself in the third person in writing don't usually occur when speaking.


Alisa at 8:22 PM on February 5, 2020 | #15395 | reply | quote

#15395 Good points but they don't imply that he didn't read my previous 10 posts. I can easily see someone making this writing error after having read them.


curi at 12:36 PM on February 6, 2020 | #15397 | reply | quote

#15397

> this writing error

Note that I pointed out *two* issues with the writing (whether they were "errors" isn't entirely clear to me), and they both tended to make you look bad socially, by slipping in nasty and false presuppositions.

> Good points but they don't imply that he didn't read my previous 10 posts.

Ok, I agree. I guess what the question actually indicates is that the author was trying to make you look bad, rather than trying to find out why you chose to refer to yourself in the third person in this particular essay.


Alisa at 8:41 PM on February 6, 2020 | #15409 | reply | quote

#15409 I am not convinced the question was trying to make me look bad because I'm not convinced the author has that much control over their writing and grammar to do it on purpose. Seems possibly accidental. I know people do lots of nasty social stuff by autopilot but I don't know that this is one of those cases.


curi at 8:46 PM on February 6, 2020 | #15410 | reply | quote

Hmm. I'm not convinced that producing this particular question with malicious intent would require the author to have fine control over his writing and grammar.

I think that most people have an intuitive sense of what things make a person look bad socially. I think that that intuitive sense commonly includes knowing things like:

- *speaking* about yourself in the third person is socially worse than *writing* about yourself in the third person

- referring to yourself in the third person is bad, and it's especially bad if you do it routinely, rather than only on specific occasions

If that's true, then it seems to me that the author could have:

1. Seized on the referring-to-self-in-third-person aspect of the essay as having the potential to make you look bad socially

2. Consciously or unconsciously brainstormed several ways to bring it up

3. Picked the way that his intuitive sense told him would make you look worse socially.

What do you think?


Alisa at 8:58 PM on February 6, 2020 | #15411 | reply | quote

That is plausible but it's hard to tell. An alternative interpretation is they left out "in this essay" at the end of the sentence as a lazy shortcut and figured it was understandable enough as written, but they kinda thought of it in terms of the fuller sentence.


curi at 9:08 PM on February 6, 2020 | #15412 | reply | quote

#15412 I agree that leaving out "in this essay" at the end is a plausible explanation. I hadn't thought of that, and I should have. However, I still have a few potential criticisms of that explanation.

In that scenario, the original question, without any words left out, would have been:

*Why do you talk about yourself in the third person in this essay?*

That version of the question seems reasonable to me. Especially in formal writing, it's natural to use "do" to ask questions about the author's position, e.g.:

*Why do you say that Popper was a falsificationist?*

However, someone writing formally wouldn't leave out "in this essay".

In *informal* writing or speaking, I don't think it's usual to use "do" to ask about what someone did in a specific incident. For example, both of the following sound unusual to me:

- *Why do you wear red today?*

- *Why do you eat that burger so quickly?*

When referring to a specific incident, I think it'd be more usual to ask the question with "do" or with the present progressive, e.g.:

- *Why did you wear red today?* or *Why are you wearing red today?*

- *Why did you eat that burger so quickly?* or *Why are you eating that burger so quickly?*

If someone started to phrase a question in one of those ways and then left out the specific incident, the result would be:

- *Why did you wear red?* or *Why are you wearing red?*

- *Why did you eat so quickly?* or *Why are you eating so quickly?*

Those sound natural enough. If the questioner had started out by phrasing the question in one of those ways and then left off the "in this essay", the result would be:

- *Why did you talk about yourself in the third person?* or *Why are you talking about yourself in the third person?*

To me, both of those seem more honest than the question that was actually asked.


Alisa at 9:30 PM on February 6, 2020 | #15413 | reply | quote

> I think it'd be more usual to ask the question with "do"

Correction: that "do" should be "did".


Alisa at 9:31 PM on February 6, 2020 | #15414 | reply | quote

Say I'm making a video. I get some friends and we do some acting and I share a rough cut for feedback. In the video, I wear red clothes in every scene. Someone asks: *Why do you wear red?* Given the context that it's feedback on the video, the question seems kinda sloppy be OK to me. That we're talking about what I wore in the video, not in general, is reasonably implied. Similarly, in this case, someone could think it's implied that we're talking about in the article they are commenting on, not in general.

This causes problems sometimes btw. E.g. sometimes there are 50 comments and then someone says something and it's hard to tell if they are trying to respond to the article or to some comment. Like are they continuing one of the multiple discussions already in comments (typically the most recent one) or are they starting a new discussion about the article?


curi at 9:38 PM on February 6, 2020 | #15415 | reply | quote

#15415

> I get some friends and we do some acting and I share a rough cut for feedback. In the video, I wear red clothes in every scene. Someone asks: *Why do you wear red?*

Good example. Both of my examples (about wearing red and eating quickly) were biased toward my position in the sense that they involved something being done once, rather than multiple times. Examples in which something is done multiple times are more representative of the scenario we are discussing, because in this essay, you referred to yourself in the third person everywhere except in the Editor's note.

I concede that it is natural to use "do" to ask about something that was done repeatedly in a particular context. And I concede that for the question we've been discussing, it would make sense that your essay was the intended context, even if the question didn't explicitly specify that.

I don't yet know the root cause of these mistakes, nor what I could do to prevent them in the future. I did notice two instances in this conversation where you thought of plausible explanations for the author's intent that I missed. It would have helped if I had come up with similar good, unbiased examples on my own before drawing conclusions about what the author meant, but that's not the kind of thing I can add to a checklist.

I suppose I could try to learn more about bias. That actually sounds like the most promising idea so far.


Alisa at 9:57 PM on February 6, 2020 | #15416 | reply | quote

I think you did some good analysis and you're right to be suspicious of that message.


curi at 10:09 PM on February 6, 2020 | #15417 | reply | quote

A little indication of what kind of world we live in and the need for TCS:

https://twitter.com/amasad/status/1227036926257090560

Schools prevent learning.

If he thought the kid did not want to be in the 10-week course, and was not doing the course material, then he would have intervened and tried to make the kid do stuff he didn't want to do.

The guy in the middle blames children's lack of self-control for adults preventing kids from getting what they want but also for the adults being heavy-handed and blocking many things they approve of in the process.

Yeah, they are trying to take away a reasonable guess at the most common motivation to learn programming.

It's ambiguous if the kid is referring to a physical beating. No one ambiguously says their teacher might eat them (cannibalism) or rape them. Saying a teacher might murder you for doing something *is* used, though (more commonly with parents), I think because murder is what you get when you exaggerate force while leaving it generic, and teachers (and parents more so) do use a lot of force. Regardless of intent, this comment isn't a random accident.


curi at 12:48 PM on February 11, 2020 | #15446 | reply | quote

#15446 Someone defended the school policy, suggesting it's harmless to prevent children from learning programming for 50% of their waking hours because they can just learn it during other hours. Would he say a similar thing about reading books?


curi at 12:53 PM on February 11, 2020 | #15447 | reply | quote

> If he thought the kid did not want to be in the 10-week course, and was not doing the course material, then he would have intervened and tried to make the kid do stuff he didn't want to do.

I do not understand what you mean by this. Was he supposed to do something else than what he did (left the kid alone to do his own stuff)?


N at 6:28 AM on February 18, 2020 | #15489 | reply | quote

curi at 2:23 PM on February 26, 2020 | #15648 | reply | quote

Want to discuss this? Join my forum.

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